JOIN USInfo about assets still unknown
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of transparency and accountability seems to hold no relevance for Rajasthan government ministers.
Even after 18 months in power, none of the ministers including Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has declared details of their movable and immovable assets in public domain.
In 2010, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had directed his ministers to declare their assets publicly. It included the assets of their spouse and their dependents also.
The same model was replicated by the then chief minister Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan. Since then, all ministers including the chief minister had been declaring their assets annually to the General Administration Department (GAD), which uploads the information on its official website.
“If we had received the information, the department would certainly had made it public. So far we have not received any information,” said a GAD official on condition of anonymity.
Declaring information about movable and immovable assets by the cabinet and state ministers had been a yearly practice in Rajasthan until the Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power in 2013. Since then none of the ministers including the chief minister has declared their assets.
Sources in GAD said even the cabinet minister Arun Chaturvedi, who is also in-charge of GAD, did not reveal his property details.
Interestingly, the official website of GAD shows property details of the previous ministers headed by the then chief minister Ashok Gehlot.
“In our Congress government all the ministers including chief minster Gehlot had declared their assets in public domain. They were even bound to declare the assets in the name of their spouse and dependents. This is what we call a complete transparency, unlike BJP government,” said Ranju Ramawat, All India Congress Committee media panellist.
“I want to ask why the BJP ministers and chief minister Vasundhara Raje are afraid to declare their assets. People of Rajasthan have the right to know it,” she added.
The Congress leaders claimed that the ruling party and their ministers are afraid to declare their assets, and on the contrary their prime minister has been claiming to bring back black money and punish the offenders. “There are so many contradictions in the ruling BJP that people cannot understand who is right and who is wrong,” said Ramawat.
Meanwhile, BJp ministers and leaders refused to officially comment on the matter. But most of them claimed that they have already sent their property details to the cabinet secretariat and they do not know what happened later.